Farm to Family Connection - Commentary

FARM TO FAMILY COMMENTARY
---Select commentary from a weekly column by Curt Arens published in the Cedar County News, Hartington, NE

January 2009

The Blame Game

Dear Friends,
It’s unfortunate that farmers are usually unnoticed and under-appreciated, unless something bad happens with our food supply. If there is a Mad Cow scare or some food borne illness, farmers are front and center and they are usually blamed for being incompetent or worse, ignorant.

So it was this past spring and summer, as food prices soared, farmers made the news again. We farmers were, according to many sources, accused of a litany of horrors. According to some folks, we were taking home hefty government subsidy checks, making record profits on grains, polluting the entire earth, pushing bio-fuels that used up the world’s food supply, while the world starved.

Farm organizations tried to tell people that transportation costs had a lot more to do with food prices than the paltry sums that farmers actually took home from a loaf of bread. We farmers tried to tell folks that most commodity grain goes into feeding livestock and producing ethanol, not into the food supply, because it is not of food grade quality. We tried to explain that much of the land that is now producing corn, would not automatically go into vegetable and fruit production, if corn, soybeans and wheat were not grown there.

Finally, we tried to remind people that farmers consume food too. We have to go to the grocery store or farmers markets and purchase food items, just like everyone else. And the price of production, i.e. fuel, fertilizer, freight, parts, repairs and seed, has also risen for farmers.

Now, I am a big advocate of sustainable agriculture, organic growers, direct marketing and local food systems. But, along with all of my neighbors and most small and medium sized family farms in our region, we also raise our share of commodity crops and run our share of small livestock production. So, we took these accusations kind of personally.

As fuel prices and transportation costs have retreated by about 60 percent from July highs, and commodity grain prices have plunged by about that same amount, I see that food prices haven’t dipped much.

It looks like the cost of production for farmers next spring will be about as high as ever, except perhaps for fuel. With much lower grain prices to deal with, that pinches even more from any profits we hoped to make on next year’s crop to feed our families.

But national media sources aren’t on top of that story, and I don’t hear much from the folks who so adamantly accused farmers of causing food prices to skyrocket. Once again, folks just want to hear the bad stuff I guess.

I think people who are not familiar with agriculture do not understand that farmers are truly price takers in many ways, Sure, those farmers who are good direct marketers, are able to sell locally raised food for prices that hopefully pay off in the long run. But they have expenses to cover too.

Even farmers who are able to forward contract and utilize marketing tools to the best of their advantage, still, ultimately, have to take prices for their products that are within a range that the market sets.

I have always said that food should not be cheap, because we don’t appreciate anything that is cheap. It should be of high quality, and it should be affordable and accessible to everyone. As a farmer, that is my wish. But, along with most family farmers, I would also hope that folks recognize that farmers are players in the food system game, but more often than not, they do not set the rules.

Hope you have a good week.